| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: "Let grief distract the sufferer's breast,
And night obscure his way;
They hasten him to endless rest,
And everlasting day.
"To thee the world is like a tomb,
A desert's naked shore;
To us, in unimagined bloom,
It brightens more and more!
"And, could we lift the veil, and give
One brief glimpse to thine eye,
Thou wouldst rejoice for those that live,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: thought for one instant that she might again unite the past with
the present. You had the right to do what you did, Armand; people
have not always put so high a price on a night of mine!
I left everything after that. Olympe has taken my place with the
Comte de N., and has told him, I hear, the reasons for my leaving
him. The Comte de G. was at London. He is one of those men who
give just enough importance to making love to women like me for
it to be an agreeable pastime, and who are thus able to remain
friends with women, not hating them because they have never been
jealous of them, and he is, too, one of those grand seigneurs who
open only a part of their hearts to us, but the whole of their
Camille |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: search for some saleable memento. . . .
Benham sat musing in silence. The thought of deliberate cruelty was
always an actual physical distress to him. He sat bathed in the
dreamy afternoon sunlight and struggled against the pictures that
crowded into his mind, pictures of men aghast at death, and of fear-
driven men toiling in agony, and of the shame of extorted obedience
and of cringing and crawling black figures, and the defiance of
righteous hate beaten down under blow and anguish. He saw eyes
alight with terror and lips rolled back in agony, he saw weary
hopeless flight before striding proud destruction, he saw the poor
trampled mangled dead, and he shivered in his soul. . . .
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: But what was the beautiful place like, and where was it?
Ah! that is just what she could not say. And it is strange, but
true, that no one can say; and that those who have been oftenest in
it, or even nearest to it, can say least about it, and make people
understand least what it is like. There are a good many folks
about the Other-end-of-Nowhere (where Tom went afterwards), who
pretend to know it from north to south as well as if they had been
penny postmen there; but, as they are safe at the Other-end-of-
Nowhere, nine hundred and ninety-nine million miles away, what they
say cannot concern us.
But the dear, sweet, loving, wise, good, self-sacrificing people,
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